Owner of Segway rides Segway off cliff, dies

Only had company since early 2010

Jimi Heseldon, owner of the Segway company, has popped his clogs after riding a segway off a cliff.

While riding around his North Yorkshire estate on a Segway, he reportedly drove straight off a cliff and into the River Wharfe. A spokesperson for West Yorkshire police confirmed his death: "He was pronounced dead at the scene."

Segways, the vehicle which has the rider standing upright and looking like an utter plonker, never really took off. Mainly because they had the rider looking like an utter plonker. They utilised gyroscopes to keep upright and will head in the direction the rider is leaning, including toward cliffs, the Telegraph reports.

Heseldon had only owned Segway when his company, Hesco Bastion, acquired it early this year.

The first reported Segway fatality, that we could find, was back in 2004 in Las Vegas when a man fell over during a racing event.

Heseldon, 64, built his empire on defence contracts. At the time of his death he was worth £166 million and ranked 395th on the Sunday Times Rich List.

I'm sorry, he must not have read the warning posted on each unit and on the company's web site: "Not to be used by Brits, as Brits have an annoying tendency to do stupid things. Like drive Segways off cliffs."

Not Rich Wargo - 27 Sep 13:18

Twat

hahaha - 27 Sep 14:31

you think Brits do stupid things....you should have a visit to the USA

Hey, hahaha, I live in USA. I've also visited England several times. I prefer Prague.

Not Rich Wargo - Don't you think it's about time you crawled out from your mommy's basement and got your own identity?

Scarborough Fair parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - 27 Sep 18:05

What a pity. A Bastion, no doubt, in a rugged country, found in the drink without his balance to lean on.

But enough about Rich Wargo.

Mike Magee - 27 Sep 19:57

All your von Drasheks are belong us

Peter Chan - 27 Sep 21:16

Segway accessorized with airbags, and possibly lifebuoy.

Allen Smithee - 28 Sep 05:01

This news is being reported as an accident on CNN and BBC and all world media, but I do believe it was a suicide. One does not just drive off a cliff in a Segway. This was a planned suicide. The news will come out later. A tragedy, but not an accident. Read between the lines. This was suicide for sure. Maybe adjust your headline with an update?

- A.S.Liverpool

Opps Beamer - 29 Sep 03:34

read between the lines, of course, this was no accident, he killed himself. suicide plain and simple. The initial reports, without a suicide never, never tell the truth out of respect for family, but you will see, it was suicide. 100 percent offed himself. read the news again. and look at foto of the cliff. that was NO accident.

Bob Mackert - 29 Sep 03:46

The Truth the Dead Know

by Julia M. Klein

SEPTEMBER 28, 2010

In a darkly comic world-premiere play that is selling out the Gift Theatre in Chicago’s working-class Jefferson Park neighborhood, nearly everyone is a potential suicide, a suicide survivor, or both.

Suicide, Incorporated, Andrew Hinderaker’s one-act drama, is directed by Jonathan Berry with the force of an oncoming train and features edgy, in-your-face Chicago-style acting. But the intensity starts with the play itself: It is written from the heart, in memory of the playwright’s own lost friend, identified in the program as CJ (1984-2005).

The program is stuffed with a flyer from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, stressing the important fact that “more than 90 percent of people who kill themselves are suffering from one or more psychiatric disorders,” including depression. Interestingly, the script itself fails to mention depression, or the many drugs and therapies available to combat it. This is a major omission, but not – if you’ll excuse the expression -- a fatal one.

Suicide, Incorporated also suggests, chillingly and contrary to fact, that self-immolation is a popular choice for getting the job done. Clearly, not everything here is meant to be taken literally; this is, after all, theater, where the dead haunt and taunt the living in the guise of flesh-and-blood actors.

The dramatic action takes place in a somewhat stylized black-and-white world, encapsulated by Dan Stratton’s versatile, claustrophobic set. The production (extended through October 10) aims not for medical or sociological accuracy, but for emotional truth – in particular, the truth that suicide wreaks devastation on those left behind.

From its riveting opening scene, a job applicant’s interview with the head of a company purveying suicide notes, Suicide, Incorporated grabs the audience and doesn’t let go. A deft exploration of both the pain of loss and the pain of life, the play offers a smart take on incapacitating gender norms. As the title signals, it also satirizes American capitalism and workplace oppression -- recession-friendly themes that add a contemporary twist.

The protagonist is Jason, a former Hallmark writer portrayed with engaging subtlety by the likable Joshua Rollins. Jason faces off against the founder of Legacy Letters, Scott (Ed Flynn). Overbearing and suspicious, Scott questions whether Jason’s desire to help the firm’s clients craft their final missives to the world is sufficiently sincere.

Scott is a frightening bully (a convincing caricature, in Flynn’s over-the-top performance). He barks out staccato, contradictory orders to a Stepford-wife-like employee named Perry (Jay Worthington) and hawks his product shamelessly, with a “spring special” and “platinum package” to encourage letter-writing sales.

But Scott is no fool, and his suspicions about Jason turn out to be spot-on: We find out that Jason’s other gig is as a volunteer at a suicide-prevention hotline, and his motive for seeking this new job is to keep Scott’s clients from killing themselves. Over the course of the play, we will meet Jason’s brother, Tommy (Mike Harvey), and experience Jason’s wrenching guilt and regret at not being able to save him.

Jason gets his shot at redemption with a hapless, despairing client named Norm, played by Michael Patrick Thornton, Gift’s artistic director. Norm’s mostly self-inflicted romantic and job woes have led him to the brink of suicide; he needs Jason to help him pen a goodbye. “He’s reeling, off-kilter – keep him that way,” Scott advises Jason. In other words: Close the deal. Jason, of course, has other plans.

Norm happens to be wheelchair-bound -- an infirmity that is, confusingly, not alluded to in the script. That’s because Thornton himself (best known for his role as an arrogant doctor on ABC’s Private Practice) is slowly recovering from two strokes that paralyzed him in 2002, when he was just 24. For those in the know, his real-life drama adds a subtext to an anguished and affecting performance.

Hinderaker, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a nominee for the 2010 New Voices in American Playwriting Award, has a gentler, sunnier point of view – even in a play about suicide -- than David Mamet. But he betrays the influence of that quintessential and inescapable Chicago playwright in his use of overlapping dialogue and profanity, as well as in his male-dominated dramatic universe.

There are, in fact, no female characters in Suicide, Incorporated, except as images in the minds of men. These men are closed off from intimacy, isolated from one another, struggling to communicate. In an odd way, they may need the services of Legacy Letters, however bizarre and inappropriate, to translate their inchoate feelings into words that can bridge the relational abyss. If not to help them die, they require interpreters, editors and emotional facilitators to help them live.

Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review in USA part of the world,

Oren Laster - 29 Sep 11:33

I looked it up; it is suspicious. But the report I read said that the hill wasonly 9 meters. Have to have a lot of faith that 9 meters will certainly killyou.

Maybe he was just embarrassed to be seen on a Segway.

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please, no jokes.... the blogosphere is full of jokeslike that....a man killed himself, it is no joking matter,you should be ashamed of yourself.....jokes are cool, but not in thisinstance, google and see the photos, it was long cliff a high cliffand he did not just fall off.....he drove off...........you willsee......but cut the jokes.....i love humor but right place right timeright occasion, RiGHT?

Still, although that fall was fatal, it is still somewhat suspect that a manwould look at it and be convinced falling from that height would kill him forsure. But of course, the rest of the circumstances sure do point to suicide.